We are continuing our research into Clipstone Colliery’s history to celebrate its Centenary. This text is from an article by Sid Chaplin in the March 1956 edition of ‘Coal News. Photograph by Hayward Smead: “High productivity has depleted the Top Hard reserves. Within the next decade they will be worked
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The Mining Blog is joining Clipstone Headstocks and Clipstone Village, Clipstone ex miners, surface, office and management workers, their families and friends in remembering that 2022 is Clipstone Colliery’s Centenary Year. This photograph shows the headstocks being constructed. We have no date or other details for this photograph:
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March is Women’s History Month and we are ending March by highlighting the role of women in coalmining. Professor Chris Wrigley in his essay, ‘Women in British Coalmining’, says that whilst the 1842 Parliament Act banned women and children from working underground, “There was a long history of female labour
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Blidworth Welfare Band is a brass band with a mining heritage. “We started out in the late 19th century as the Stanton Hill Temperance Band” based in Sutton in Ashfield, the band later changed their name to the Stanton Hill Silver Prize Band until the coal industry paid an interest
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We should like to thank Thoresby Colliery Band for allowing us to provide a link to their moving rendition of Gresford, The Miner’s Hymn. On September 22nd 1934 an explosion at Gresford Colliery in The North Wales Coalfield near Wrexham killed 266 miners. Gresford, the Miners’ Hymn,, with its haunting
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In this post for International Women’s Day 2022 we are celebrating the strength of the women in our coalfield communities. We celebrate their strength, whether they were fighting pit closures, acting as trade union reps for their fellow workers, campaigning against the closure of welfares, holiday camps and rehabilitation centres.
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This week’s Mining Blog continues our celebration of Nottinghamshire’s Mining Brass Bands and features Shirebrook and Clipstone Miners Welfare Bands. “Brass Bands make music and in doing so create environments where people from all walks of life can flourish and develop, socially, educationally and artistically.” Mike Kilroy, Chairman, Brass Bands
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For a few weeks the Mining Blog will be celebrating the coal mining industry’s brass band tradition. Following Vesting Day in 1947, when the NCB became the employer of over 800,000 people and the owner of 950 pits, it also found itself the owner of a number of brass bands;
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The Nationalisation of the Coal Industry was barely a year old before ambitious plans for developing the training of new recruits was unveiled. Coal News announced in February 1948 ambitious plans for the establishment 0f juvenile residential training centres. These centres, planned to be run in cooperation with
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Alan Spencer, the current Notts NUM General Secretary, shares his recollections of his early years in mining with the Mining Blog. “I started my 37 years in the mining industry at Welbeck Colliery in 1974 just after the 74 strike. I started as everyone did in North Notts at Lound
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